UNIX / Linux Find File Owner Name
Q. How do I find out the name of file / directory owner under UNIX / Linux operating systems?
A. You can use ls -l command (list information about the FILEs) to find our the file / directory owner and group names.
The -l option is known as long format which displays Unix / Linux / BSD file types, permissions, number of hard links, owner, group, size, date, and filename. In some environments and UNIX versions / Linux distributions, providing the option --color (for GNU ls) or -G (FreeBSD ls) causes ls to highlight different types of files with different colors.
(Fig. 01: Linux file colors)
(Fig. 02: Understanding Linux / UNIX file colors code [ image credit wikipedia] )
How do I find out owner / group name for a file?
Type the ls -l command at a shell prompt:
$ ls -l filename
Sample output:
-rw-r--r-- 1 vivek admin 2558 Jan 8 07:41 filename
Where,
- -rw-r--r-- : file mode
- 1 - number of links
- vivek - Owner name (if user name is not a known user, the numeric user id displayed)
- admin - Group name (if group name is not a known group, the numeric group id displayed)
- 2558 - number of bytes in the file (file size)
- Jan 8 07:41 - abbreviated month, day-of-month file was
last modified, hour file last modified, minute file last modified - filename - File name / pathname
ls -l file mode (permissions)
Quoting from the unix ls command man page - the file mode printed under the -l option consists of the entry type and the permissions. The entry type character describes the type of file, as follows:
| - | Regular file. |
| b | Block special file. |
| c | Character special file. |
| d | Directory. |
| l | Symbolic link. |
| p | FIFO. |
| s | Socket. |
| w | Whiteout. |
The next three fields are three characters each: owner permissions, group permissions, and other permissions. Each field has three character positions:
- If r, the file is readable; if -, it is not readable.
- If w, the file is writable; if -, it is not writable.
- The first of the following that applies:
- S : If in the owner permissions, the file is not executable and set-user-ID mode is set. If in the group permissions, the file is not executable and set-group-ID mode is set.
- s : If in the owner permissions, the file is executable and set-user-ID mode is set. If in the group permissions, the file is executable and set group-ID mode is set.
- x : The file is executable or the directory is searchable.
- - : The file is neither readable, writable, executable, nor set-user-ID nor set-group-ID mode, nor sticky.
- These next two apply only to the third character in the last group (other permissions).
- T : The sticky bit is set (mode 1000), but not execute or search permission.
- t : The sticky bit is set (mode 1000), and is search able or executable.
See ls command man page for more information:
$ man ls
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- Linux/UNIX: chmod error
- How Linux file permissions work
- Find the file permission without using ls -l command
- How to use chmod and chown command
- Finding files in Linux filesystems
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Tags: character positions, different colors, fifo, group names, group permissions, group size, hard links, linux distributions, man page, number of bytes, numeric group id, owner group, owner permissions, symbolic link, type character, unix ls, unix versions, vivek, whiteout
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